The lessons of living with war

War is a talented teacher. It teaches you to praise everything you have, no matter how little there is. Believe me, if you have all your limbs and eyesight in place, you are already lucky. I have met too many people who would agree with this point.

There is no simple way to describe what it feels like to be Ukrainian during the war. I will try to give you an idea.

Sergey Panashchuk is a Ukrainian journalist based in Odesa. He works for international media for more than ten years. Russia’s full-scale invasion made him a war reporter. Like many journalists on the ground he is under enormous mental and economical pressure. He risks his life every day to report from his home country. Support Sergey through Ko-Fi. From March to June 2024 we will forward him all contributions you send us.

Let me be honest with you. I didn’t care enough about anyone else but myself before the full-scale invasion. I realise that now. I just could not comprehend how priceless and precious a personality and human life is and how important the people I love are to me.

Do not repeat my mistakes. Appreciate what you have when you have it. Your boring job, the roof over your head, your annoying friend, your wife, husband, girlfriend, or boyfriend. Millions of Ukrainians have lost all of this. Hold your beloved ones tightly; make them feel loved. There is nothing more meaningful or valuable than human life.

The beginning

We were all terrified on the first day of the full-scale invasion. It was the moment of a life-determining decision. If the Russians had been able to conquer the whole country overnight, and in the first few hours the situation looked as though they were totally capable of doing so, they would have had no mercy for Ukrainians with active political positions.

One of the local politicians asked for my advice on whether he should have moved his family abroad and what the Russians would do if they came to Odesa. I told him that the first thing would be the ethnic cleansing, killing, and torturing Ukrainians, including children and women. Then the whole world saw what happened in Bucha.

The 24th February was the moment of choice. Either you had to prepare yourself mentally to leave under Russian rule, leave the country, or fight. I decided to fight the best way I could: Report on the situation and the war crimes to a global audience in the UK and Germany.

Life under blackouts

The spring and summer of 2022 were hard, but the following autumn and winter were even worse. In the autumn, the Russians started destroying our energy system to freeze us to death. They thought we would start riots and demand the president to stop the war. This means that the Russians still do not understand the essence of the Ukrainian soul. We will never comply with slavery and will never be put on our knees by anyone.

The attacks on the Ukrainian energy system started in September 2022  and continued for the next six months. Let me tell you what it means to live under constant blackouts. First, it takes from six hours to a week to restore the electricity to the whole city. In late October, the whole of Odesa was plunged into darkness. We were heading from work to our cold homes in complete darkness. No one was in the streets. Odesa turned into a ghost town during the complete blackout. You can’t order a taxi because there is no internet or mobile connection, and you have to go through the darkness for kilometers to get to your home. You can’t call anyone. You don’t know how your family and friends are doing or where they are.

Later on, we had electricity for four hours a day. two hours in the late evening and two during the day. We had no heating and sometimes water for days, and it is cold in Odesa. It was common to go to your friend’s place, where they had water to take a shower, do the laundry, and charge devices. Most of the time, we could not reach out to our loved ones and our friends. It was happening until February.

We survived the blackouts. The Russians spent billions worth of rockets to break us, but they failed.

The miracle of Ukrainian society

Ukrainian society created a miracle instead of collapsing and being afraid of being killed. People got united around the army, government, and each other. As a civil society, we have already won, and we are formed as a nation. We did not know what to expect during the first days of the war and during the blackouts. Would we all go crazy and resort to looting the supermarkets? It did not happen. Instead, we united. Many humanitarian organizations appeared, and we started helping each other. Volunteers buy drones, cars, and equipment for the soldiers. Still, two years after the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Cars and drones are disposable on the frontlines. Ukrainian civilian volunteers are keeping the army alive.

The war against barbarism

This is not just a Russian-Ukrainian war; it is a war of civilisation against barbarism. You can’t have peace talks with barbarians and sadists who want to kill and rape you.

Peace talks are not an option. Russia doesn’t want peace. The attack on grain storages in Ukraine and civilian buildings is a good example of what Russian intentions are. They want to inflict as much harm as possible to Ukraine and to obliterate Ukraine as a free state and Ukrainians as a people. This did not happen because of the resilience, strong will for freedom, and bravery of the fallen heroes. Nobody, including the CIA, expected Ukraine to last more than three days at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. We did the impossible. We fought the nuclear empire, the manifestation of pure evil. But we are close to reaching our limits.

This war cannot be won on the battlefield. Even if we liberate all the occupied territories it will not stop Russia from sending the drones and missiles wherever it wants.

Western states should put more diplomatic and economic pressure on Russia. I believe that the war will only end if we have NATO presence on the frontlines. One could say it may lead to WWIII, but we already have quasi-WW III: An insane amount of countries united to help Ukraine fight Russia, and I don’t think that Russia would ever attack NATO. If you look at history, Russia and the Soviet Union only attacked countries that they thought were weaker: Finland, Georgia, Afghanistan. Only NATO can end this war and the genocide in Ukraine.